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July 25, 2008 – HK Observatory
The Hong Kong Observatory has launched a weather website for the Olympic and Paralympic Equestrian Events.
It provides the latest venue-specific weather forecasts and warnings, real-time weather conditions, and Air Pollution Indices from the Environmental Protection Department.
In addition, on-site observers will monitor weather conditions at the event venues around the clock.
HK factories not fleeing Dongguan, says official
Chloe Lai in Dongguan – Updated on Jul 24, 2008 – SCMP
The Dongguan party secretary yesterday denied the city had seen an exodus of Hong Kong factories because of the unfavourable business environment created by the yuan’s rise, a new labour law which has added to their costs, and environmental charges.
Liu Zhigeng also denied suggestions that the authorities were forcing labour intensive, low-tech and highly polluting industries to leave. He said the number of new factories and the number of those either closing or moving was consistent with previous years.
“Over the years, there are always about 4,000 new factories setting up in Dongguan and some 700 either closing down or moving out,” he said.
“The number in the first half year is consistent with previous years. It is natural, businesses moving in and out.”
Speaking to a group of Hong Kong media representatives, the party chief said Dongguan had to upgrade industries to become high-end and environmentally friendly.
However, he stressed the city would rely on economic incentives rather than administrative measures to achieve the goal. “We will do it step by step. We will experiment by implementing a pilot scheme.”
Mr Liu also said the authorities were discussing operations upgrades with low-end and labour-intensive factories. Economic incentives include using 20 billion yuan (H$22.9 billion) to set up 34 sewage treatment plants and four incinerators to reduce environmental costs for the enterprises.
Officials have been ordered to improve their communications with Hong Kong and other enterprises and to cut government charges.
The party chief also said that since most of the Hong Kong enterprises were large-scale, they had not been badly hit by the unfavourable business environment.
Beijing applauded for clean-up effort, then the haze floats back
Al Guo – Updated on Jul 24, 2008 – SCMP
Beijing’s air quality fell yesterday as environmental experts, Olympics officials and the mainland media applauded the city for its efforts to clean it up.
Beijing’s composite Air Pollution Index reached 89, following readings of between 50 and 60 on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, the first three days of traffic restrictions.
According to the index, compiled by the Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau, all but five remote suburbs in the city had air pollution levels higher than 80 yesterday, with a couple of districts registering up to 99. Any figure recorded above 100 is considered harmful to health.
Gilbert Felli, the International Olympic Committee’s Olympic Games executive director, was quoted by Xinhua yesterday as saying he had been pleasantly surprised to see the improvement of air quality in the past few days.
“I’m very surprised because I thought it would be different but it’s much better, much better. You don’t feel bad when you breathe, so it looks good,” Mr Felli said before the release of yesterday’s readings.
State media also praised the city’s efforts to curb air pollution in the past few days, saying Beijing could keep its promise to offer Olympic athletes clear air during the Games.
Xinhua published a chart that showed the capital was expected to have 256 clear days this year, compared with 246 last year, 241 in 2006 and just 100 in 1988.
But the official praise was not enough to eradicate doubts that even taking half of the city’s vehicles off the roads may not be enough to guarantee better air quality.
“Situations like this could happen even during the Olympic Games, but hopefully we will see air quality continue to improve as we probably need at least a week to 10 days to see the effects from this traffic restriction,” environment expert Zhu Tong said.
Mr Zhu said the rise in the index yesterday may have been caused by unfavourable weather conditions in Beijing.
IOC chief Jacques Rogge has warned that some endurance events at the Games may have to be rescheduled if air quality threatens the health of athletes.
For long-time residents of the city, yesterday’s air quality was still more or less acceptable, with some even feeling the air improved in the morning.
Mr Zhu said people could sense differences in air quality, which changed throughout the day.
But the final index was determined by calculating the average level of pollutants in the air during a 24-hour cycle, he said.
Finance Asia – By Lara Wozniak, | 24 July 2008
The majority of Hong Kong people who travelled overseas in the past year took no action to address the negative impact of their trip. HSBC aims to change that.
Don’t know how to buy carbon credits to offset your jetting around the region? You’re not alone. But HSBC is offering an insurance policy plan that won’t break your bank and may help cut pollution in Hong Kong.
In a recent HSBC Insurance survey on green travel, 80% of Hong Kong travellers said they did not do anything to offset the carbon dioxide emissions resulting from their travel activities; even as 90% believed that carbon dioxide emissions are harmful to the environment.
When asked about the reasons why they did not do anything, close to half (47%) said they were not aware of any carbon dioxide emissions-offsetting programmes or schemes; 24% did not care about offsetting; 16% did not know that travelling caused damage to the environment; and 13% could not afford the extra amount to pay for environmentally friendly products and services.
On average, the more than 500 respondents in the survey conducted by The University of Hong Kong’s Public Opinion Programme travelled 3.6 times during the past 12 months.
When asked about future plans to offset carbon dioxide emissions from travel, more than half (54%) said that they had no such plans, compared to 32% who answered in the affirmative.
“It appears that the concept of green travel has not caught on among the majority of Hong Kong people who travel,” says Jason Sadler, managing director for HSBC Insurance’s Hong Kong business. “It is alarming, especially as environmental protection and air quality have become priority concerns for the Hong Kong community. However, the survey also shows that a big part of this apathy is due to factors such as lack of awareness about their choices and high costs of going green.”
Of those who said they were willing to pay more for environmentally friendly travel products or services, the average amount that respondents would pay is HK$167 for every HK$1,000 spent on a single trip.
Not surprisingly, given HSBC was connected to the survey, it has a solution that uses Hong Kong technology and benefits the city – its Let’s Travel Green donation programme.
In this plan, 1% of the insurance premiums paid by customers who buy or renew single or multi-trip travel insurance policies from HSBC from now until June 2010, will be automatically donated to fund the use of ‘eco-blocks’ in the buildings and pavements of 10 non-profit organisations in Hong Kong.
HSBC Insurance says it will donate about HK$2 million on behalf of customers to this project. The ‘eco-block’ is a material invented by a team of researchers led by professor Poon Chi-sun of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University’s Department of Civil and Structural Engineering and its Research Centre for Environmental Technology and Management.
Made from recycled glass and ash with a coating of titanium dioxide, the ‘eco-block’ has pollutant-busting properties that break down certain harmful chemicals in the air. Used as a paving andpartitioning material for buildings, streets and pavements, the ‘eco-block’ contributes to improved air quality by removing air pollutants emitted by cars, trains, airplanes and other vehicles.
Mercury – Donna MacFarlane – July 23, 2008 12:00am
CHINA is ready for the Olympics, but it is not being smug about it writes Donna MacFarlane.
The 31 Olympic venues were finished months ago — at a cost of more than $US40 billion. But in the final two weeks before the world shines its spotlight on Beijing, the city is doing its best to look pretty.
Choking air pollution has been widely discussed in the lead up to these Games — although it has been suggested that it became such a big issue because the usual dramas of construction works lagging behind schedule were missing.
It is a big task, but the Chinese are on a mission to clear the skies. The plan includes closing dozens of cement factories, steel mills and heavy industry in Beijing and surrounding provinces.
The biggest polluters are cars — the city is home to about 3.3 million, and they are being targeted in a fashion similar to our own drastic water restrictions to combat the dry summer months.
Starting from this week, the rules state that cars with odd and even numbered licence plates can only be driven on alternate days. It’s only temporary, things will go back to normal in a couple of months, but in the meantime, getting around could be very interesting for local commuters.
Three new subway lines have just been opened to cope with the massive influx of public transport passengers.
Authorities expect people to take the new rules seriously. On their first day in force, when only even-numbered plates were allowed on the roads, police on motorbikes were apparently placed at key intersections to inspect traffic. From the footage I have seen of the pollution, they might have struggled to read the number plates from any distance.
If you get caught driving on the wrong day, there is a fine of about $14. It is thought that is sufficient to deter people from starting their engines against the rules.
From the local perspective, the biggest winners have got to be the taxi drivers. The rules do not apply to them, and they have the opportunity to make a lot more money, while driving in considerably better conditions.
I must admit, I am not too worried about the pollution in Beijing. I raced there on the road years ago, and I did not think it was too bad. The humidity is the factor that will have the most impact. In any case, it is the same for everyone and I will have one week in Hong Kong beforehand to get used to it.
Updated on Jul 22, 2008 – SCMP
Trading in carbon credits between rich countries and the developing world has come in for a lot of flak recently, with China, as the world’s largest source of the credits, attracting much of the criticism.
The existing system certainly has flaws, and concerns that some of the credits being traded do not represent genuine reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are clearly justified. But the idea that polluters in the rich world can meet their emission targets by funding reduction projects in developing countries remains a good one. Despite its faults, the scheme should be strengthened and expanded.
Because it makes little difference to global warming where exactly on earth greenhouse gasses are pumped into the atmosphere, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol included an arrangement called the clean development mechanism, or CDM. Under this, rich country polluters can invest in projects to cut emissions in the developing world, crediting the reductions towards their own greenhouse gas targets.
In the last couple of years, the CDM market has really taken off. More than 150 projects have won approval in China, with another 850 or so in the pipeline, mostly developing wind or hydro-power, improving energy efficiency, or cutting emissions of industrial gasses like hydrofluorocarbons.
Earlier this month, for example, investment bank Lehman Brothers agreed to pay mainland power producer China Guodian a reported €52 million (HK$644 million) for 4.2 million tonnes of certified carbon dioxide reductions.
But even as the CDM market has approached critical mass, it has come in for some withering criticism. Doubters’ top concern is that many of the certified projects would have gone ahead anyway, even without the additional incentive of CDM funding, so the reductions being traded do not represent genuine cuts in emissions.
“The whole mechanism is in question,” says Simon Powell, head of power research at broker CLSA.
According to a new study commissioned by the conservation group WWF, however, CDM funding can play a critical role in boosting internal rates of return above the 8 per cent threshold at which renewable energy projects become attractive (see chart below). Without CDM investment, many Chinese wind and hydro power projects, as well as conversions from dirty coal to cleaner gas, wouldn’t have happened.
Where the CDM scheme has been less successful is in persuading wasteful industrial companies, especially in the steel and cement sectors, to increase their energy efficiency by using waste heat to generate electricity, even though rates of return can be much more attractive. With bank credit rationed, says Fulvio Bartolucci of Azure International, the Beijing consultancy which compiled the report, energy efficiency initiatives are getting crowded out by even more lucrative investments.
Even so, the CDM scheme has been instrumental in raising Chinese companies’ interest in cutting emissions, improving transparency and setting standards. For it to be really effective, says Liam Salter of WWF, it should now be expanded from individual projects to cover whole regulatory programmes and industry sectors.
The problem with that idea is that the current CDM scheme is due to expire in 2012 and uncertainty over what will replace it is already discouraging new investments. If the mechanism is to be effective in the longer term, policy-makers need to get working now to extend and tighten the scheme. Then we might begin to see some meaningful emission reductions coming out of it.
tom.holland@scmp.com
Updated on Jul 22, 2008 – SCMP
Shame on the Hong Kong and Beijing governments.
The pollution on the mainland and in Hong Kong is disgusting. Every time I visit it is worse.
Greed for the spoils of industry’s money outweighs the health of citizens. I ponder their lifespan and the huge health costs. Who will pay for that? What has happened to responsibility and duty?
I have been to the Commonwealth and Olympic Games; it is an awesome experience. But I will not be going to Beijing.
Joy Mosse, New Zealand
More stringent steps planned as Beijing continues to choke despite traffic curbs
Shi Jiangtao in Beijing – Updated on Jul 22, 2008
Beijing might further curb driving to clear the skies following the bold traffic restrictions that went into effect on Sunday but left the skies still hazy.
More cars will be taken off the city’s roads if the measures, which included a ban on construction works and closing down certain factories, do not clear the air in time for the Games just 17 days away, according to an official with the Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau.
“We are still finalising the emergency plan tackling higher-than-standard pollution levels and extremely unfavourable weather conditions, which includes banning more cars in the city,” said Li Xin , deputy chief engineer of the bureau.
She did not give additional details of the plan but said it would go further than the current restriction that assigns driving days based on whether a car’s number plate ends with an odd or even number.
According to environmental expert Zhu Tong , who has been involved in drafting Beijing’s pollution controls for the Games, the plan calls for up to 90 per cent of the city’s 3.3 million cars to be taken off the road.
Authorities would continue to use number plates to determine which cars can drive that day, but tie the scheme into the day of the month. “For example, if pollution levels are too high on August 3, it means only drivers with licence plates that end in the number 3 would be exempted from the new plan,”
The plan would be unveiled soon and only be imposed “under extremely poor weather conditions”, according to Ms Li.
The air in recent weeks has been noticeably cleaner, although yesterday’s sky wasn’t as clear as on Sunday, which Ms Li put down to higher humidity and vehicle exhaust.
Pollution readings backed this up. Particulate matter, a key pollutant in the city, was 65 micrograms per cubic metre yesterday, comparing to 55 on Sunday.
Forecasts put the reading of the pollutant for today at 70 to 90 micrograms per cubic metre, which would be one of the heaviest polluted days in the past week.
But Ms Li was confident Beijing would meet its pollution-reduction pledges during the Olympics next month.
“We have seen more blue skies these days, which should be attributed to frequent thunderstorms partly and apparently the traffic restrictions imposed earlier,” she said. “We are fairly close to meeting our commitment for the Olympic air quality and I am confident we will be able to deliver a green Olympics.”
Latest statistics from Ms Li’s office showed Beijing had seen 19 blue sky days this month till yesterday, compared to 17 days during the same period last year. Blue sky days are a mainland measurement that indicates air quality has met the national standards for urban residential areas.
Du Shaozhong , a deputy chief of the city’s environmental bureau, said it would take about 20 days to see the impact of the traffic curbs.
But Professor Zhu said the public would only need a week to tell whether the stringent car bans and other bold measures have worked.
According to him, Hebei and Tianjin would impose driving curbs similar to the capital’s odd-even restrictions if Beijing is unable to clear its air itself.
Wetlands could unleash ‘carbon bomb’: scientists
Reuters in Washington – Updated on Jul 21, 2008
The world’s wetlands, threatened by development, dehydration and climate change, could release a planet-warming “carbon bomb” if they are destroyed, ecological scientists said on Sunday (early on Monday HK time).
Wetlands contain 771 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases, one-fifth of all the carbon on Earth and about the same amount of carbon as is now in the atmosphere, the scientists said before an international conference linking wetlands and global warming.
If all the wetlands on the planet released the carbon they hold, it would contribute powerfully to the climate-warming greenhouse effect, said Paulo Teixeira, coordinator of the Pantanal Regional Environment Program in Brazil.
“We could call it the carbon bomb,” Teixeira said by telephone from from Cuiaba, Brazil, site of the conference. “It’s a very tricky situation.”
Some 700 scientists from 28 nations are meeting this week at the INTECOL International Wetlands Conference at the edge of Brazil’s vast Pantanal wetland to look for ways to protect these endangered areas.
Wetlands are not just swamps: they also include marshes, peat bogs, river deltas, mangroves, tundra, lagoons and river flood plains.
Together they account for 6 per cent of Earth’s land surface and store 20 per cent of its carbon. They also produce 25 per cent of the world’s food, purify water, recharge aquifers and act as buffers against violent coastal storms.
Historically, wetlands have been regarded as an impediment to civilization. About 60 per cent of wetlands worldwide have been destroyed in the past century, mostly due to draining for agriculture. Pollution, dams, canals, groundwater pumping, urban development and peat extraction add to the destruction.
“Too often in the past, people have unwittingly considered wetlands to be problems in need of a solution, yet wetlands are essential to the planet’s health,” said Konrad Osterwalder, UN Under Secretary-General and rector of United Nations University, one of the hosts of the meeting.
So far, the impacts of climate change are minor compared to human depredations, the scientists said in a statement. As is the case with other environmental problems, it is far easier and cheaper to maintain wetlands than try to rebuild them later.
As the globe warms, water from wetlands is likely to evaporate, rising sea levels could change wetlands’ salinity or completely inundate them.
Even so, wetland rehabilitation is a viable alternative to artificial flood control for coping with the larger, more frequent floods and severe storms forecast for a warmer world.
Northern wetlands, where permanently frozen soil locks up billions of tonnes of carbon, are at risk from climate change because warming is forecast to be more extreme at high latitudes, said Eugene Turner of Louisiana State University, a participant in the conference.
The melting of wetland permafrost in the Arctic and the resulting release of carbon into the atmosphere may be “unstoppable” in the next 20 years, but wetlands closer to the equator, like those in Louisiana, can be restored, he said.
Teixeira admitted wetlands have an image problem with the public, which is generally well-disposed to saving the rainforest but not the swamp.
“People don’t have a good impression about wetlands, because they don’t know about the environmental service that wetlands provide to us,” he said.
Associated Press in Beijing – Updated on Jul 21, 2008
Morning haze hung over Beijing on Monday, the first workday for restrictions on car use under a bold plan to clear the Olympic city of its notorious smog-choked skies.
Under a two-month plan that started on Sunday, half of the capital’s 3.3 million cars will be removed from city streets on alternate days, depending on whether the license plate ends in an odd or even number.
It could be several days before a trend in the clean-up plan – which includes cutbacks on construction and factory closures – appears, for both traffic use and the skies over Beijing.
Drivers with odd number plates were forced to take public transportation, but said it was not as crowded as they had expected.
Besides the traffic plan, chemical plants, power stations and foundries had to cut emissions by 30 per cent beginning Sunday. Dust-spewing construction in the capital was to stop entirely.
Those caught driving on days they shouldn’t will be fined 100 yuan (about HK$114) a pricey penalty even for Beijing.
Despite architecturally adventurous venues and US$40 billion (about HK$311) spent on improving infrastructure, China’s greatest challenge has been keeping the city’s air clean for the world’s greatest athletes participating in the Aug 8-24 games. Instead of blue skies, Beijing’s skyline is normally shrouded with a thick grey haze.
Already, many competitors are choosing to train away from Beijing, and International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge has said outdoor endurance events lasting more than an hour will be postponed if air quality if poor.
The world’s greatest distance runner, Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia, has decided not to run the marathon event because the city’s pollution irritates his breathing.
Some 300,000 heavily polluting vehicles — ageing industrial trucks, many of which operate only at night — were banned beginning July 1.
The government has also improved public transportation options for the estimated 4 million extra people who will be off the roads because of the traffic plan, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
The subways may not have been as crowded on Monday as originally expected because employers have been asked to stagger work schedules, and public institutions will open an hour later than normal.
The city plans to add up to 3,000 more buses by the time the Olympics start, raising the daily capacity for passengers from 12.5 million to 15 million, it said.
Two new subway lines and an airport rail link were opened on Saturday, with the projected number of passengers on the three routes expected to reach 1.1 million daily during the Olympics.
Experts say the city cleanup measures could still go wrong because unpredictable winds might blow pollution into Beijing, or the lack of wind — common in August — could enable local pollution to build up.